


Sun in the Summer Court

by PutItBriefly



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: 7x04 Compliant, F/M, fae mythology, probably not accurate but I did my best to blend research with the story's needs, scottish mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 07:23:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12700131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PutItBriefly/pseuds/PutItBriefly
Summary: In her life, Belle has loved a lot of books.In her life, Belle has loved a lot of libraries.But the book she carries closest to her heart is not the first book her mother ever read to her, or the first book she ever gave her son, or even the book her husband quoted. (Before he was her husband, but after he was her monster, when she wasn’t sure what she wanted him to be.)It’s the book her family made themselves.





	Sun in the Summer Court

The Golden Ones of the Summer Court claim him as their own. It’s a long, strange road, so naturally, it begins with a book.

*

In her life, Belle has loved a lot of books.

Her imagination was first sparked by the stories her mother read to her, the stories she was delighted to pass onto her son. Gideon has his father’s eyes, but the gleam Belle sees in them when a book delivers the world to his door is all her own. Books were her first friends, filled with adventures she could join when she was all alone, of courage and happy endings for those moments when she was afraid to take a chance. The mysteries and histories of all the realms are recorded in books. Any reader that stumbles upon them receives the joy of unearthing that knowledge each and every time.

In her life, Belle has loved a lot of libraries.

First was her mother’s library. There, Belle was taught to read, to research, to think and philosophize. Knowledge is the greatest treasure of any people, the thing most necessary for future generations to inherit if society is to grow and become greater with each life lived. Second came the tower library in the Dark Castle. The moment the prisoner became a companion was the moment her captor took her out of the dungeon and gave her the freedom found in books. Decades later, in another world, gifting her with another library, he had said to her, “We may sit in our library, and yet be in all quarters of the earth.” Never was that more true than the day he gave her the tower library.

But the book she carries closest to her heart is not the first book her mother ever read to her, or the first book she ever gave her son, or even the book her husband quoted. (Before he was her husband, but after he was her monster, when she wasn’t sure what she wanted him to be.)

It’s the book her family made themselves.

*

They did not cut the paper or bind the pages. Rumple ordered it online. He had never been overly fond of technology. When the Dark Curse dropped him in the Land Without Magic, it had done so in 1983 and Mr. Gold was perfectly comfortable being a luddite that stubbornly refused anything developed later. He did not have an eReader, a tablet or any manner of personal computer. He refused to consider a cell phone until somewhere around 2007 and he never upgraded to a smartphone. Emma prefered texting to phone calls which frankly was the only reason he knew _texting_ was a thing that people _did._ He ordered a blank souvenir album online, presented it to his wife on their son’s birthday and that was the day everything began.

(And he never used his Amazon.com account ever again.)

*

The book goes like this:

On the inside cover, there is a photo of a woman, a man and a baby. They stand in front of a window. Behind them, in gilt paint, reads: _Mr. Gold Pawnbroker & Antiquities Dealer. _There are no notes, no clarification. But this photograph is where a bookplate belongs, so its intention is clear. This is who we are, the photo proclaims. This is where we came from.

And then the adventure begins. Ticket stubs and more photographs, brochures and buttons, postcards and pressed flowers are pasted onto the pages. They went first to New York. Turn the page and they have traveled south to Philadelphia. Turn the page and they’ve been to Washington, DC. They drive across America, through the dusty states and the ones known for corn. They fill pages with the eccentricities of unique little towns they never could have imagined but somehow found. And then the pages are Los Angeles. Portland. Seattle. They move north to Vancouver and make the reverse trek across Canada until they reach the Maritimes and then it’s over the Atlantic Ocean to London. There are three boarding passes glued into the book. From Heathrow, they meander through Birmingham, Liverpool and Carlisle. They cross into Scotland, and then they meet the _daoine sìth._

*

Rumplestiltskin hates fairies and as a general rule, this loathing is mutual. Fairies have done nothing but take from him. His mother abandoned him. His father never forgave him. His first son left him. All of that, directly or indirectly, is the work of fairies.

The daoine sìth, the people of the mounds, are a different breed of fairy. They exist in every realm simultaneously.

Once upon a time, when he needed it more than anything else, the ability to cross realms was beyond the power of the Dark One. Though the curse remains, the Darkness itself has ebbed away, rejected and made impotent.

The daoine sìth are beautiful and hideous, helpful and vengeful in turns. But something about the Good Neighbors and the travelers resonates. The family is granted the ability to walk through the realms and they never look back.

*

It’s important to understand that leaving Storybrooke, never to return, had not been anyone’s intention. They hadn’t sold the house or cleared out the shop. Tenants were still expected to pay their rent promptly. To prepare for Mr. Gold’s absence, he had been forced to set up _direct deposit_ which he did not trust nearly as well as walking around town and accepting wads of cash.

It just happened that way.

A pawn shop stops being the nexus of their personal universe. They realize the big, cluttered house on the edge of town was a lot more room and a lot more _stuff_ than they ever needed. Granny’s is a fond memory, but they find other foods they like as much as hamburgers and iced tea. As the years pass and that place occupies fewer and fewer thoughts, they realise they just don’t miss it.

It had never been _home._

It was just a place a curse put them, and now they had the choice to put themselves wherever they wish.

They keep going.

They keep growing.

The book gets thicker.

*

In her life, Belle has loved a lot of books.

She’s loved adventure stories and romance novels and comedies of manners. She’s loved atlases and encyclopedias and biographies. The endless varieties of books are endlessly attractive, each one answering a different need, a different curiosity, a different part of her soul. Her desire for more books has never been satisfied and she accepts it never will be. She will always, always want more.

She’s only ever loved one man.

Rumple is not an easy man to love and he owns that freely.

When Belle was young, to love him was so hard that there were moments she would have prefered to have her heart torn from her chest. To love, but not love _him,_ was impossible. But he was unwilling to let himself be vulnerable, he hid things from her, he broke her trust and her heart. But she’s not that girl anymore, with her giggles and daydreams about a scaled beast. And she’s not that beleaguered wife, wondering if she should stay or run and never settling on a decision for longer than a moment.

She is older. She is wiser. They have shared decades of commitment, adventure and honesty. Much as Rumple isn’t listening anymore, Belle knows his curse still tries to talk to him and the poisonous things it says. She knows how power and powerlessness make him feel. She knows he has not used dark magic in eighteen years, and she has not entertained a sincere doubt over his continued abstinence for thirteen.

Rumple wants to lay the Darkness to rest.

He does not want to break the curse on himself with a kiss. That would only to set the malevolent force free into the air where it can seduce a new host. He wants it to end. He wants to do what Merlin never could and see that the Darkness is defeated for good.

The book traces every path this quest has led them down. Wish granting rivers and all consuming fires and trapping the dagger in a pin in an egg in a duck in a hare in an iron chest. Nothing has worked. Light may be more powerful than Darkness, but Darkness is certainly persistent.

Belle has loved a lot of books and a lot of libraries and just one man. She has spent her life imagining heroes and seeking adventure and if this is the adventure the hero she has decided is her own wishes to pursue, then so they shall.

*

The Summer Court has a grand library.

The Seelie fae claim Rumple as one of their own, which he does not particularly appreciate, given his long standing prejudices against fairies. His history of dark magic is far enough behind him that he is regarded as nothing more than a commonplace imp: mischievous, prone to what mortals might term _over-reactions_ to offenses. That he has long provided the needy with solutions is smiled upon and his self-serving deals are politely ignored. His pragmatism is not the sort the Spring Court approves of, though, and they find themselves aligned with the Summer Court.

Of course, Rumple cannot speak or read the Seelie language so the library itself is not a great boon to him.

Belle would like to be able to say that she and Rumple don’t fight much anymore, but the truth is they do and their most reoccurring argument is the one about how he has chosen ignorance over knowledge due to personal biases that are simply no longer relevant. Ignorance that is a natural byproduct of one’s own experiences, she can overlook. Purposefully deciding against furthering one’s education, she cannot.

He needs to learn to speak Seelie.

Gideon gladly and gratefully applied himself to learning everything anyone was willing to teach him. He is frequently on the receiving end of pranks and someone is always angry at him for an offense he can’t understand, but that is the price of being a mortal in a fairy court. He studies hard and thirsts for knowledge and when he leaves, it’s in pursuit of something all his own, that this road has led _him_ to.

Belle could not be prouder.

(And also, her son can speak Seelie fluently, hint, hint.)

*

In the end—and it is very much _the end_ —Rumple’s inability to let this one thing go works in her favor.

The Summer Court, as a general rule, does not think well of dark magic, but they do not operate in complete opposition to it, either. When a situation calls for dark magic, they will use it. Consequently, the fae of the Summer Court are well informed of the dangers of dark magic and under what circumstances they should deem its use appropriate.

Belle has learned more about dark magic in her first month doing research in this library than she has in the twenty-three years she has spent with Rumple.

Around month six, she uncovers what the ancient members of the Summer Court really knew about the Dark One, what knowledge they recorded centuries ago.

The first phrase is a time word, followed by the Seelie name for the Dark One and then a rather poetic description of everlasting love.

Belle writes, “When the Dark One finds eternal love.”

The next piece of the prophecy is harder. The phrase itself is easy— _at the sun’s brightest set_ —but sunset and the sun itself are so central in Seelie culture that it could mean anything significant or important. They are the Golden Ones, upon a Shining Throne. They rule the summer. They come out at twilight, when the sun begins its descent.

The third fragment is another where the translation is easy, but meaningless: _where time stops._

And finally, the answer they have been searching for for eight years now: _the path will appear to where the Darkness shall rest._

She needs to understand the pieces before she can grasp the true meaning of the prophecy. Belle focuses on the second phrase with two questions in mind. The first, what other things would the Seelie call ‘the sun?’ The second, what makes one sunset brighter than others?

The second question is the easier one to answer. A common quirk of Seelie language is to apply intensifiers to finality. Idiomatically, the brightest set is the last one.

The first question is the more difficult, owing to the sheer degree of potential sun analogies. Common sun metaphors Belle finds includes: the concept of goodness itself, an unpleasant task one must finish before doing something fun, a throne, a jewel, success, children, the king, lanterns, a god.

Of course, none of these things make much sense when paired with finality, the last set, and death-defying love. Children, perhaps. Rumple’s dedication to his children is at the very core of his being. His love for Baelfire and Gideon is all-powerful and eternal. The brightest set of a person? Their final set? Death.

Her motherly instincts rise up and revolt. She has an urge to toss the book aside, give an unkind word to the fae librarian and move on from this realm. The travel book lies on the table before her, bulging with memories. The next adventure awaits. The next attempt to find information that will lead them to the end of the Darkness.

But this prophecy is the closest thing to an answer she has found in eight years of looking. No one else has ever dared imply the Darkness could be laid to rest. Belle takes a deep breath. She squares her shoulders and forces herself to consider it from an impartial angle.

When Baelfire died, no path to lay the Darkness to rest appeared. In the months immediately following that loss, Rumple succumbed to the Darkness in the worst fits of malevolence and selfishness she had ever seen from him. It cannot be what the prophecy refers to.

Rumple gives no allegiance to kings or gods. He’s not one to sacrifice himself on the altar of an ideal. His only true love is his children, and her.

To believe in their love has long been a struggle. He has an inherent skepticism that anyone could ever love him. A lifetime of rejection has left scars. Paired with his cognizance of the things he has done, for a long time, he saw himself as unlovable. He’s beyond that now, she thinks. She has stood by him through so much, come back to him so many times, been so deeply committed to making their marriage work that he believes her every ‘I love you.’

But does he believe that their love is the eternal, ever-lasting, stronger than death love an ancient fairy predicted eons ago? And if he can believe that, and believe such a love is capable of bringing the Darkness to rest once and for all, what does that entail?

When the Dark One believes he is eternally loved, at the time of his wife’s death, in a place where time stops, the path will appear?

Belle doesn’t know where time stops. She’s been to many, many different realms over the years and she knows time moves differently in nearly all of them. She’s heard of realms where nothing changes and no one ages—Neverland, even Storybrooke was once like that. And she’s been to realms where a hour there is a week someplace else. And that nightmare of a realm where Gideon lived his first life, three decades passed in a Storybrooke day.

But she does know that love is the most powerful magic of them all. True Love can chase a curse from a person’s body. Eternal Love, it follows, can chase a curse from the world. To defeat the Darkness, all she must do is love her husband until her own inevitable death and love him still beyond even that.

And until then, she gets him. A life with the only partner she’s ever wanted. She can do that.

A library brought her the answer, a book led the way.

The Golden Ones call Rumple their own, but he can’t speak their language and doesn’t know their metaphors. He knows the place where time stops, but to him the sun is only the sun. He doesn’t refuse to accept her sacrifice, if that’s what he would call it, because he doesn’t know she’s making it.

_(If_ it is—and she thinks it’s not—making sacrifices is what heroes do. If she can lead the Darkness to rest, she shall. If she can save her husband’s soul, she shall.)

*

Belle spends her life in an eternal summer day.  

**Author's Note:**

> This story was beta'd by Ramurphy2005 and FeliceB.


End file.
